A lifelong aviation enthusiast who joined&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;in 2007, Curt came to&nbsp;the publication&nbsp;from the broadcast industry where he was a national science and technology television reporter and producer. He writes on the FBO field, aviation finance, and sustainable aviation and occasionally contributes to&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;sister publication&nbsp;Business Jet Traveler. Curt was a member of the AINtv reporting staff that won the 2008 Aerospace Journalist of the Year award for Best Airshow Daily. That same year, he was a finalist for another AJOYA award. He earned an AJOYA for Best Business Aviation Submission in 2018 and was a finalist in that category in 2021. He received the National Air Transportation Association’s&nbsp; Aviation Journalist Award in 2012 and won a Pegasus Sapphire Business Aviation Award for outstanding journalism in 2021.
Before joining AIN, Curt worked with&nbsp;Consumer Reports’ television division, CRTV, and for several local television news staffs. An honors graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University in 1995. Curt lives in New York State with his wife and two young sons.

Senior Editor

Curt Epstein

This promises to be a busy year for Sikorsky as the airframer is anticipating the first flight of two military programs and the ramping up of production on the new S-76D. At a “State of Sikorsky” briefing yesterday morning, company president Mick Maurer gave an update on the UTC subsidiary’s business over the past year.

 


On the military side, Sikorsky inked four major contracts including a $1.3 billion long-term Blackhawk deal with Turkey that includes a major industrialization effort to set up a local supply chain there. The U.S. Air Force committed to an $8.08 billion combat rescue helicopter contract for 112 aircraft, as well as the $3.2 billion U.S. presidential helicopter program, and a $500 million developmental award for the SB-1 Defiant, being developed in partnership with Boeing for the Joint Multi Role-Technology Demonstrator competition. Meanwhile, Sikorsky is anticipating the imminent first flight of the compound rotorcraft S-97 Raider, and the CH-53K heavy-lift helicopter began ground test runs last week.

 


According to Maurer, overall company sales were up by 6 percent year-over-year, while the operating profit increased by approximately 9 percent. While the company determined its backlog at approximately $16 billion, he explained that value is understated as it only includes government programs that have been appropriated in any given year rather than the full amounts of multi-year programs. Maurer noted that with the full value of those contracts included, Sikorsky’s backlog would swell to around $49 billion. “We are set up for some significant organic growth,” he said.

 


On the commercial side, while the OEM reached a record last year in S-92 production, delivering 42 aircraft, Maurer doesn’t expect to repeat that number this year. “When the market went up, we didn’t expand our capacity as quickly as we could have given the demand,” he said. “We’re hoping as a result of that, as the market goes down we’re not going to see quite the dramatic swing that we might have had we reacted and ramped up too quickly.”

 


The oil segment remains the company’s most important commercial sector and Maurer acknowledged “some strain on the system this year, short-term on the commercial business.” He explained that more than 80 percent of offshore oil rigs are used for production and the company has not yet seen much change on that end in terms of flying hours and demand. “We definitely are seeing some pressure on the exploration side,” Maurer said, noting the company is working with customers to ride out this most recent cycle.

 


Sikorsky expects to grow its top line again this year due to the introduction of the S-76D, which just received EASA certification for VIP operations. For both the S-76D and the S-92, search-and-rescue use is becoming a growing niche, Maurer noted.

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